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It’s a potentially daunting role trumpet star Terence Blanchard will take on Friday at the Flynn Center: He’ll join percussionist Poncho Sanchez and His Latin Jazz Band in re-creating the music from a legendary 1947 Carnegie Hall concert in which Dizzy Gillespie and influential conga player Chano Pozo helped bring Latin jazz into the public eye.

In other words, Blanchard will essentially be channeling Gillespie, one of the true giants of jazz history. And he’s not intimidated one bit.

“I’m just having fun playing this music with Poncho,” Blanchard said in a recent phone conversation from his home in New Orleans. “I gave that (worrying) up when I was in my 20s. In order for us to really pay homage to it we have to have fun playing the music.”

It might help Blanchard’s nerves that, now that he’s in his 40s, he has a lifetime of musical experience to draw upon when he takes his shot at honoring a jazz master. Much of Blanchard’s career has been built upon learning from jazz masters, whether from performing in the band of one (Art Blakey) or the orchestra of another (Lionel Hampton), or as artistic director of a school named for yet another jazz immortal (the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz). Blanchard’s done more than learn from the big names who preceded him; he’s made his own impressions in the world of jazz, most famously by scoring several of Spike Lee’s films.

Blanchard is known for incorporating African rhythms in his music, but until he started working with Sanchez he was less familiar with the language of Latin jazz. He said he’s been a fan of Sanchez and his band for years and sat in with them a few times. “I just fell in love with what it is they do,” Blanchard said. “Over the course of time we talked about possibly doing something. The next thing you know Poncho called me (and said), “I have an idea about this.’”

The idea was to revive that 1947 concert featuring Gillespie and Pozo. Blanchard knew what Sanchez was talking about when he mentioned that famous collaboration. “That’s legendary,” according to Blanchard. “One of the things that I think about with that music is it’s so prevalent now, we don’t really understand the impact it had when they first did it. Those were separate worlds. Those guys brought both worlds together.”

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Latin jazz certainly has a prominent place in the world of jazz, and the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival features a star of the genre at the Flynn Center pretty much every year. Blanchard, though, had to stretch his musical knowledge when starting rehearsals with Sanchez and his band.

“Just listening to those guys in a session talk about the rhythms and all the names they have for the rhythms, it was hard for me to keep up,” he said. “They have a whole other language because the other rhythms are very much a part of the history of their music. They all know it.”

Blanchard is ready to sink into those rhythms with Sanchez and his band. Burlington will be among the first of 30 or so stops Blanchard and Sanchez will be making on the tour that will feature the Gillespie/Pozo music as well as compositions by Sanchez and Blanchard.

“It’s not the type of thing I want to learn by reading from a book,” Blanchard said of Latin jazz. “It’s the type of thing I want to absorb. I know over the course of time playing with these guys I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I get it now.’”

While much of the language of Latin jazz is new to Blanchard, the sounds aren’t so foreign to the native of a city that’s the biggest musical melting pot in the nation. He said Latin rhythms, especially Brazilian beats, have seeped into the city’s sound. “New Orleans was one of those spots that was a haven for all of those cultures to kind of mix and create,” according to Blanchard. “Art Blakey said New Orleans is American, it’s where all these cultures meet.”

Blanchard hopes the Burlington audience learns a little something about that blending of cultures with Friday’s concert.

“It’s about paying respect to two great musicians who had the courage to do something very unique,” he said. “Hopefully when people come to hear the music it will have an impact on their lives.”